Xenos Symmachos
by Those-Who Walk-Alone
Summary: "I don't care what you are, you're still my friend." "Just friends?" [Sci-fi AU, Elsa x Anna, no icest]


_Xenos_ _Symmachos_

_Chapter 1_

"Sir? I think you'd want to take a look at this."

The officer hit a few keys into the console, bringing up the holographic display, the blue and somewhat glaring light illuminating the interior of the room. From his position Hans leaned over his own console, placing his hands to support his weight on the platform handlebars, staring at the display. Upon it, the motion detector network materialized, its range enhanced by Kairos' long-range satellite networks, the familiar green and blue dots of military and civilian ships popping up on the projection.

Something else was there, where it shouldn't have been.

The projection highlighted the craft in a red outline, a separate red reticule materializing to rotate around the craft, tracking its course. "It's unidentified, sir. Neither ours nor any known origin."

"Have you tried hailing it?" Hans asked, his eyes narrowing into slits as he contemplated his possible courses of action.

"Yes sir. We've received no response thus far."

"When did this ship enter our detection range?"

"Only about five minutes ago."

"Is it lethal?"

There was silence aboard the bridge as the officer turned back to the console and initiated a craft analysis. The display zoomed in onto the unidentified craft, revealing its intricate design. The white exterior was illuminated by the star that Kairos orbited, upon which were detailed engravings, symbols of which their nature undecipherable. Hans spotted thrusters and course correction systems alongside the main propulsion output, noting the sleek, almost organic nature of the craft. He hadn't seen anything like it before.

Frankly, that very simple fact scared him a little.

"Initial scans indicate no identifiable weaponry, sir." The officer turned around from his console to face Hans. "That ship is likely of non-lethal nature. A storage unit, a lifeboat, escape pod, perhaps."

Hans raised an eyebrow. "You're sure this isn't some Weselton prototype bomb?"

"Not that we can confirm. Our intel on their technology doesn't indicate anything of this kind. That engine propulsion matches that of a tier 5 battlecruiser, and its schematics aren't known to us, nor Weselton."

"So what is it? Is it alien?"

"That's what we're afraid of."

Hans fell silent. His facial features glazed over, completely neutral, masking the sudden wave of fear that had hit him in the face. _Alien._ The word repeated over and over again in his head as the full implications of the discovery hit him. _Alien._ He'd gotten up this morning in the full expectation of a normal patrol run around the planet, and his past 10 years in the military had expected him to deal with criminals, terrorists, organized enemy forces and attacks.

But nothing like _aliens_.

"What's its plotted course?"

"If it continues down this course, the ship should impact somewhere in the Kairos desert, sir."

"Track its descent. Get a team to trail that craft. I want it, and whoever is in it, to be identified and secured. Be ready for anything."

"Already on it. Firing tracker beacon through bay 1 and dispatching Alpha 1-7 to pursue the craft." Hans felt the small thump on the bridge as the tracking beacon fired, gliding into view of the bridge window before the afterburners engaged with a bright, flaring light, dramatically increasing its cruising speed as it raced to catch up with the unknown object. He tapped a few buttons on the console, bringing up his own glass screen, entering his officer encryption code.

"Kairos HQ, this is Captain Hans of the USE _Trident_. Request audience with GAMEMASTER ZERO, rank Athena, authorization 0137."

"Copy that, Captain Hans, patching you through secure channel. Please wait."

Hans' screen faded to grey static before clearing again, the new window popping up with the USE logo and a black background, the audio lines jumping as the first words were uttered. "Captain Hans. I trust that something truly urgent has occurred, given the nature of your request."

"I'm afraid so, sir. At about 0200 hours, approximately 5 minutes ago my officer spotted an unidentified craft cruising within detection range of Kairos long-range satellites. Upon analysis we believe it is not of USE, Weselton, nor any human origin. It possesses a remarkable engine, advanced course correction system, sophisticated design, yet no identifiable weapons."

"...give me a sitrep on its current progress."

Hans looked up from his screen to the main bridge projection. "If the craft continues its course it will hit the Kairos desert soon, ETA 5 minutes. I've sent a tracking beacon to monitor the craft and a dispatch to secure it when it impacts."

"Captain Hans, you do realize the Kairos desert is designated Weselton territory, classified under file 662."

Hans swallowed. "Yes sir. Which is why the unit I sent was of Alpha designation, equipped with enough firepower to hold off Weselton forces should the need arise."

"Do what you have to do, Captain Hans, but it is imperative that we obtain this craft. If Weselton gets to the craft first, they may adapt that tech to their use in one wah or another should this ship be as revolutionary as we think it is."

"What about aliens, sir?"

"Aliens?"

"The ship is of unknown origin. What if it's carrying some kind of weapon?"

There was silence on the other end. Then the voice came again. "What designation was your dispatch team, Captain?"

"Alpha, sir."

"Consider sending another one of those down. You know, just to be safe."

* * *

"Hey."

She stirred.

"Hey, Anna. Wake up."

"God fucking dammit, Kristoff, give me some sleep."

"Hey this is urgent."

"It's 2 am!" Annoyed, and now more awake than she was previously, Anna pushed herself off the bed to face Kristoff, standing beside the other bunk. Her stray wisps of hair, messy from sleep, hung drooping on her head as she tried to ignore the creeping grip of exhaustion that grappled at the back of her eyeballs. "What could possibly be so important?"

"Something's coming down."

"From where? The fucking shipments again?"

"No. From space."

It took a moment for those words to sink in, before they hit Anna like a brick. "Wait, what?"

"Tracking something coming down in orbit, impacting near our location in ETA 5 minutes." Anna brushed her hair back, picking up the band to tie her hair into a bun as she stood up, forcing the sleep from her eyes as she squinted at the glaring light coming from the bridge screens. _This is new._ Normally they'd target Weselton shipments or the occasional emergency USE supply routes that passed through the desert, where ambush from the sand dunes were pretty easy. Something from space though, that was… different.

"Do we know what it is?"

"Can't tell," Flynn said as he walked in, looking at his datapad. "Our detection systems don't have the necessary magnification to zoom in much."

"How do we even know it's worth looking at then?"

"Oh believe me," Rapunzel chimed in, "any tech that can be salvaged from space is worth at least a few grand down here. It is worth a look."

"Look. It's 2 am. Why in the world should we be bothered about this thing? We can look at it in the morning. It's not like there are any other bounty hunter cum scavenger teams scouring the Kairos desert."

"You make it sound like we're the bad guys," Kristoff remarked.

"We're certainly not 'good', whatever your definition of that is," Anna retorted. "Why do we have to—"

"Look," Flynn interrupted, "I hate to cut off your philosophical inquiries, but we have a USE team within the same area of space, along with some kind of tracking beacon that is hot on the object's heels. Within 5 minutes of impact they'll be crawling all over the wreckage; we need to get there as soon as we can."

Anna desperately wanted to go back to sleep, but given how low on supplies they'd been running on, they needed something to sell to get the necessary credits; contracts came harder nowadays. As much as she wanted to float back into another dream, Flynn had a point.

"Wake up, beauty queen. We need to get going, or we'll starve for another week," Rapunzel said.

Super.

"Fine," Anna sighed, half-reminiscing of the comfort of sleep, but forcing her mind to focus as she keyed in commands on the console. "We good to go?"

"Yeah, tracking is up on your cockpit display."

"Fantastic." Anna maneuvered over to her seat in front of the controls, leaning back against the peeling leather as she started up the ship, murmuring something along the lines of "come out, come out, wherever you are." The hull rumbled as the engines started up, the Desert Toad cruiser rising from beneath the sands, the small grains falling off her windscreen as they ascended to levitation altitude, before the afterburners kicked in for increased velocity. Anna set a waypoint for the impact site, and then shifted the joystick, bringing the craft into a lazy swing before accelerating.

"Let's go get some space junk."

* * *

Her head hurt. Badly. At the rate she was going she wasn't going to be seeing straight at all.

If she could even see anything to begin with. The darkness around her was not comforting.

A small, dim, flashing red light barely illuminated her surroundings, foreign and unfamiliar. She felt cramped; moving her limbs merely slammed them against warm metal or cushioned rests. Her joints ached, to add to the whiplash, and she had no idea where she was.

Or who she was.

The thought had suddenly occurred to her, and she was hit by a wave of fear. She panicked, gasping for air even though there was plenty of it, her hand lashing out to impact the metal opposite her, suddenly enveloped in a cooling sensation upon contact, and the red flashing light got even dimmer. Already her surroundings felt cooler.

Was that... ice?

The pain in her head went from a dull throbbing to a piercing knife, stabbing through her consciousness as the memories all came rushing back to her; her identity, her curse, her life endured through verbal abuse and discrimination; segregation and loneliness, fear and despair, the launch in the capsule she was in to escape a deadly fear that she no longer recalled—

She gasped for air.

She was dying out here.

And she couldn't even remember her name. _What was it? It rests on the tip of my tongue, yet I cannot remember for the life of me—_

_Oh wait._

_It's Elsa. Isn't it?_

_I don't even know anymore._

The darkness around her merely amplified the wave of claustrophobia that hit her; she felt a compelling urge to escape the walls that constrained her. _How did this pod work?_ Anxiously she planted both her hands upon the panel opposite her, pushing with an ever-increasing amount of strength, until she heard the creaking of bent metal and a strange hissing noise that got louder and louder.

_Wait. That's the metal, too._

The panel came off suddenly, impacting the soft sand in front of her.

The sound was anything but soft. It didn't make sense to her – it was SAND. Why did it sound like a resounding clang? A gust of wind blew past her, recognizable by the sensation on her rosy cheeks and her platinum blonde hair whipping past her face, but even her hair was tinged with a glare that made it painful to look at; the light of the planet's moon was blinding and she fearfully shielded her eyes, the gentle breeze sounding like terrible, terrible howling. Everything screamed at her like it was out to kill her; but then again, who wasn't? She wasn't a person, merely something to be used, then discarded. She was a weapon—

_Is that why I ran away?_

_Did I run away?_

She knelt upon the sand, feeling each and every single grain upon her bare palms. Her ceremonial dress still enwrapped her slender figure, her light blue, translucent sleeves looking more eerie than they'd ever been, her hands spreading the frost across the desert sand. Questions bombarded her head as she fought off the assault on her senses, pressing her hands to her ears, trying desperately to figure out how to cut out the noise that was eating away at her head, her mind screaming out repeatedly _make it stop Make It Stop MAKE IT STOP—_

Blinding whiteness engulfed her and she cried out, raising her hands to ward it off. It didn't work; her eyes burned from the contact, the world yelling into her ears as she fell to the sand beneath and curled into a ball, begging for whatever it was to have mercy on her. She was falling apart, and after all she'd been through, she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Through the glare she made out a silhouette, but it wasn't that shape that bothered her; it was the fact that that shape carried something which really looked like some kind of gun.

And she had seen enough things to know what looked like a gun.

* * *

Anna hit the spotlights on the Desert Toad, illuminating the crash site.

She'd expected more, honestly. All there was were a few pieces of scrap lying alongside the main body of what appeared to be a capsule, and the only other thing was—

_Wait. Is that… a girl?_

_She's – gorgeous._

She couldn't have been more than 19, almost Anna's age, yet she curled upon the desert sand, her mouth opening and closing in the form of someone begging for help. Behind her she heard Rapunzel utter the three words that were probably on everyone's minds right now.

"What the fuck?"

Anna hit the auto-levitate and jumped out of the seat. "I'm getting down there."

"What?" Kristoff was incredulous. "You're our pilot! Me and Rapunzel will get it."

"Yeah, and I'm the only one who knows how to help someone medically. That girl is hurt. I'm going to help her."

"Anna, we're wasting time. The USE will be crawling all over us pretty damn soon!"

"We're not leaving her behind here!" Anna half-yelled at Kristoff, only realizing how outraged she really was after she'd said that. She looked at Kristoff's face, carrying a rather surprised expression. Flynn and Rapunzel didn't say anything either.

"Sorry," she uttered, walking over to the weapons closet and grabbing an ECR1.

"Someone put panic pills in your orange juice?" Flynn asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I just woke up Flynn. You guys didn't leave any for me, evidently." Anna hit the ramp deploy on her console, walking over to the back of the Desert Toad and leaping onto the sand, shielding her face from the engines whipping up particles next to her. Under the moonlight she looked at the silver, gleaming wreckage and the beautiful figure lying in front of it, clad in a mesmerizing blue dress. Behind her, she heard Kristoff and Rapunzel begin to descend the ramp as she took her first steps forward towards the wreckage.

_Did I just call that girl beautiful?_

Anna aimed down the sights of the ECR1, but refused to put her finger on the trigger; she didn't want to misfire. When she was about a meter away from the figure lying on the ground she could make out the words "Conceal, don't feel. Conceal, don't feel" being repeated over and over again. The words unnerved her; she didn't know what they were supposed to mean, especially since they were coming from a girl who'd come out of a pod that come streaking down from space. Something else was restraining her back, though she couldn't quite understand what.

Eventually she mustered up the courage to ask, "Are you okay?"

She only got a groan in response.

Rapunzel and Kristoff caught up to her. "We've got 3 minutes before USE gets over here, so whatever you're doing, do it fast."

Tentatively Anna slung the rifle over her shoulder and knelt beside the girl. She placed one hand upon her skin and marveled at the coolness of the touch, but at the same time there was an unhealthy clamminess about it. She felt her wrist, detecting a rapid pulse, hearing the girl's breathing speed up. Without any more hesitation she reached over and pulled open the girl's eyelids, staring into the intense blue eyes that confronted her.

Staring. Lackluster.

She was right. "She's going into shock," Anna warned, picking the girl up with both her arms, carrying her in an almost cradle-like position as she nodded towards Kristoff and Rapunzel. "Hook up the main capsule and bug outta there; we won't have time for much else. Flynn?" Anna switched on her radio. "Start up the medical stand. I've got a victim going into shock and we need to get her medical attention."

"You sure about this?" Flynn answered her request with a question of his own as she trudged hastily back towards the Desert Toad. "Why the hell are we helping her out?"

"We can't just leave her here!" Anna replied.

"What's gotten into you? We assault shipments for a living! People get hurt but they get patched up. What's so different about her?"

"Maybe it's cause she's in the middle of the desert, with no backup, and no one to patch her up!" she retorted, letting the steel in her voice become very evident, the sounds of the hook clasping onto the capsule reaching her ears as Kristoff readied the tow.

"Okay," he said. "Pull 'er in."

She heard the tow activate, metal creaking against metal as she placed the girl upon the medical stand Flynn had deployed. Her hands flew across the console, hooking up the medical apparatus and necessary mechanics, starting up the machine. The screen lit up in a flurry of lights as she punched in the commands the treat the symptoms she'd found, her mind finding herself worrying that she was doing something wrong in the way she'd keyed in the commands, and Anna found herself double checking just to make sure, all in the name of keeping this girl, that she'd just met, alive. She had no idea why she was doing this, but she only knew that it felt right, and in a time like this, her gut feel was all she had to go on.

"You got it?" she called out.

"Yeah, we do," Rapunzel replied, pushing the hull of the capsule against the ramp, cringing at the squeaking of metal. "And not a moment too soon." Already the sounds of engines were filling the air."

"What is that?" Kristoff said all of a sudden, pointing at a screen Flynn hadn't noticed, causing him to turn, and squint. Anna took a brief second to look up, and dread filled her heart. She knew that squint of his; Flynn only did that when he was pretty sure they were about to get screwed, and wanted to make sure he wasn't making a mistake.

_Well fuck._

"That's a tracking drone," he said slowly, "and it's locked on to us."

"Shit!" Kristoff grabbed the only ARCHER launcher they had and slid a round into its chamber. "Where is that thing?"

"Rapunzel, make sure her vitals are stable." Anna gestured towards the medical stand as she rushed over to her pilot controls, grabbing the joystick in a panic and swerving the ship around, spinning up the guns as she attempted to locate the aforementioned drone. "Flynn? Give me a visual on that thing!" The marked reticule popped up on the side of her screen, a signal for her to turn in that direction.

"Dammit. It keeps moving!" Flynn cursed, his own hands occupied with his weapons console. "Can't get a lock on the thing!"

"Hold the thing steady," Kristoff said. "I got this." Anna put a strong hold on the joystick, clasping it to ensure Kristoff wouldn't fall out the back, and heard the "whoosh" sound of the launcher as it fired, along with the resulting explosion. "Gotcha."

"We got company," Rapunzel warned. "I'm tracking a high-powered attack vessel on the same vector as the drone."

"Shit." Anna hit the ramp close on her console, and swerved the ship again, eliciting a curse from Kristoff as she executed the maneuver, reaching up to flick switches and levers, prepping flares and counter-measures. If she was right about the incoming attack vessel, then they were woefully unprepared; Alpha-designation squads were targets they'd never dared to assault before, and certainly weren't hoping to do so anytime soon. "Get all our firepower ready, Kristoff. I got a bad feeling about this one. Rapunzel, see if you can increase our engine performance."

"Already on it," she replied.

"All pods are locked and loaded," Kristoff reported, as he took his place at the other gun. "Ready when you are."

"Try to get us outta here first," Flynn said. "I don't like the looks of this."

"Yeah," Anna concurred, bringing the Desert Toad into a turn as the first lights of the attack vessel showed up on the horizon. "Neither do I."

* * *

_What the—_

Everything was still screaming at her. She'd given up blocking it out, but now some girl had hooked her up to some kind of apparatus, mechanized apparatus that looked way too primitive to her. Or maybe it was her altered memories; she didn't know the extent of her amnesia yet, so she couldn't be sure.

But she was sure they were in some kind of danger.

Then she remembered. Just a little bit more, though most of her memory was shrouded in amnesia. _Very well. I'll need everything I can still think of._

_I still have a few talents._

Elsa reached out with her mind, almost able to see the psionic tendrils reach out towards her new companions. She didn't want to take any chances; if she was in any immediate danger she needed to get out of there, fast. But as she made contact with their own minds her suspicions fell flat; they harboured no ill-intent towards her. Or at least, not yet.

She could "see" their emotions. The blonde girl, clouded with determination as she worked the mechanics on the vessel Elsa lay inside. The blonde man, also fervently working with live ammunition. The black haired man, manning some kind of weapons console, his mental state erratic. And the red-haired girl at the pilot seat, fear clouding her heart.

All of their hearts were clouded with fear, in fact.

But the pilot's was different. Elsa sensed a different kind, a fear for… _no. Wait. Is that me? In her head? But… why?_

Elsa ignored it; she had a debt to repay. They'd gotten her out, now she'd do the least to return the favour. All of them were preoccupied, but why? Her tendrils made contact with the visionary aspects of the red-haired girl through the cloud of panic, seeing the cause of her worry. Another attack vessel.

_Well then. This planet still has some moisture, right?_ She could feel it all around her, so she could make use of it.

Through the pilot's eyes she watched herself work her own magic, looking on as the attack craft suddenly exploded into shards of ice, quickly melting by the resulting fire. Through her own garbled senses she heard almost intelligible speech, something along the lines of "What the hell was that?" Elsa allowed herself a glimmer of satisfaction.

And then she blacked out.

* * *

She woke up staring into two of the most beautiful green eyes she'd ever seen.

For a moment everything was clear.

"How are you?" she heard. She looked up again. The red-haired girl was still there, looking back down at her. She blinked, straining her neck to look at the mechanized apparatus she had been hooked up to.

Then it hit her.

Everything was clear.

Her vision, her hearing, and while she still had amnesia, everything else was fine. She'd just looked at the most beautiful girl she'd ever seen.

And everything was indeed, clear.


End file.
